Chan Sook Choi (b. 1977) has developed a multisensory visual language centered on themes of migration, movement, and community. The artist explores various perspectives and narratives about her position and existence through multidisciplinary methodologies, including exhibitions, performances, and live events. Her work stems from a deep interest in the history of communities and the profoundly ordinary lives of the individuals within them.

Since moving to Berlin in 2001, Chan Sook Choi has lived a long migratory life, traveling back and forth between Korea and Germany. As a nomadic female migrant who has always existed on physical and mental borders, she naturally began exploring the concept of "identity" as a means to articulate herself. Her journey of self-discovery starts with uncovering her past and present experiences, memories, and the beings she connected with along the way. 

For example, 1218 (2007), which reflects on memories of her mother—the closest "other" to the artist—takes December 18, her mother's memorial day, as a universal code for death and expresses it through symbolic language. In this work, the artist wrote 12 letters containing 18 condensed sentences and sent them to two dancers, asking each to choreograph based on the letters. She filmed the dancers' movements in different sets and projected their performances onto a single screen.

The performance work Private Collection (2010) serves as a kind of performance archive, based on the narratives of elderly residents in Mullae-dong, the neighborhood where the artist lived at the time. This work consists of video recordings of the elderly residents’ faces and interviews, objects like paper and plastic bags onto which their faces are projected, and the movements of dancers performing on stage. 

By projecting the elderly residents’ personal stories onto disposable plastic bags—items created to carry or contain something. The dancers’ movements, accompanied by the rustling sound of plastic, merge to create a multisensory experience. Within this evocative space, the audience is invited to respond emotionally and intellectually to the traces of life and stories etched onto the faces of the elderly residents.

The memories of the elderly are brought to life and actualized on the stage of Private Collection through various sensory elements. Choi describes the exhibition space as “a place where the present is unfolded based on memories,” positioning herself as “the orchestrator who invites people into this space to bring their memories to the stage.” She refers to this process as an “experiments with narratology.”

The Promised Land (2014) is a work that emerged from the artist's reflections on the interplay between physical and mental migration, formed through her own migratory experiences. It explores the gap between these two forms of migration within a social context. 

The piece features a video shot at Tropical Islands, Europe’s largest indoor waterpark, combined with an audio guide from the Autostadt, the showroom of German automobile company Volkswagen. The audio emphasizes the perfection of their mobility technologies, suggesting that such technological advancements can lead to a better life. 

When paired with footage of ordinary individuals' daily lives, the audio raises questions about whether the mechanized and automated society we live in today can truly be as fantastical and optimistic as it claims. While advancements in mobility technology may facilitate freer and smoother physical migration, they do not necessarily entail essential migration—migration on a mental or existential level.

In 2015, at Alternative Space LOOP, the artist introduced optogenetics, an advanced technology symbolizing mental migration. Optogenetics uses light and genetic engineering to regulate brain activity, enabling mental migration through chemical methods. 

Drawing from Autostadt, a symbol of advanced mobility technology, and the futuristic possibilities of optogenetics, the artist created an image program called “Opto-rhodopsin” within the exhibition space. This fictional device conceptually enables the implantation of memories through the electrical stimulation of light particles received via the eyes. 

Within the exhibition, the representations of these two technologies—physical migration and mental migration—continuously clash, creating a deliberately disorienting experience for the audience. This multisensory confusion mirrors the discomfort and unease often faced by physical and mental migrants, transferring these experiences into the gallery in an evocative manner.

Starting from her own questions about an unstable identity as a foreigner, Chan Sook Choi has, since 2010, engaged in work that involves meeting women from Germany, Japan, and Korea who were displaced and migrated due to grand narratives like ideology in the post-World War II era. She listens to and reimagines their memories. 

The Re-move (2017) project documents the traces and memories of numerous migrant women she encountered while tracing the footsteps of her Japanese paternal grandmother, who had a migratory life similar to her own. The artist followed the journey of her grandmother, who left Japan to marry a Korean man, as well as the lives of the victims of sexual slavery drafted by Japan’s Imperial Army and the elderly women of Yangjiri, a propaganda village in the South Korean side of the DMZ in Cheorwon.

By walking in their footsteps and standing on the same ground they once did, Choi created various forms of records that reflect their lived experiences.

For instance, Archive Yangjiri (2016) documents the lives of elderly residents in Yangjiri, a village populated by migrants and used as a propaganda tool aimed at North Korea. Chan Sook Choi focused on reconstructing Yangjiri as an expanded domain and territory of migrant identities. 

The artist visited the old 9-pyeong (approximately 30 square meters) houses that were given to migrants 40 years ago, conducting interviews and observing how the residents had expanded, repaired, and cultivated their homes over the years to make them livable. She discovered that these homes were materialized representations of their identities and personal narratives. Treating these findings as excavated artifacts, Choi reimagined and documented them through photographs, miniature house models, and sand sculptures.

Choi carefully avoids objectifying her subjects as "victims" or marginalized "others" in her efforts to reimagine their memories. To achieve this, she delves beyond the singular identity frameworks imposed by grand narratives, seeking to connect with the intimate experiences and memories of individuals. 

This approach is evident in Myitkyina (2019–2021), a project addressing the 20 Korean women forced into sexual slavery for the Japanese military during World War II, deployed from Busan to Myitkyina, Myanmar. While there are records and photographs confirming their existence, no firsthand testimony from these women has surfaced to date.

Noting this absence, Choi introduced three fictional witnesses into her work, women of different nationalities who share the name "Myitkyina," named after the place itself.

In Myitkyina, the three fictional women named "Myitkyina" each represent distinct hegemonic perspectives on the issue of the victims of sexual slavery for the Japanese military: imperialism, patriarchal nationalism, and feminism. However, their narratives conflict, leaving the truth ambiguous and unresolved. This dynamic mirrors the sharp ideological clashes often found in discussions and research about sexual slavery.

Simultaneously, Choi speculates about the untold personal stories that might exist within silence. Rather than framing imagined memories as historical testimonies of victimization, she constructs them as small sensory moments tied to life in Myitkyina. This shift reframes these women not as "objects" confined by hegemonic narratives but as living, breathing beings who existed in myriad forms and moments.

In qbit to adam, Choi reflects on the power dynamics of land ownership and the marginalized figures displaced by land ownership, an inquiry that began after meeting women in Yangjiri who were denied legal land ownership due to the patriarchal system and political events. The work, presented in the Korea Artist Prize 2021, is the culmination of her long exploration into land, body, and ownership.

The video begins with the story of “Copper Man,” a mummified figure discovered in 1899 in the Chuquicamata mine in Chile. The figure's greenish hue, caused by copper gradually seeping into the body over time. Through this, Choi addresses the question, "When did land become an object of human control and ownership?" The work investigates this through marks left on the land, unraveling the traces of ownership that have shaped and displaced lives throughout history.

In qbit to adam, the video weaves together the history of human labor and material ownership, from past mining practices to the current day mining of cryptocurrency. The copper-colored exhibition floor reflects the video, creating a connection between the audience's bodies and the land beneath them. This reflection serves as a symbol of Copper Man, intertwining the land and body as one entity.

In this work, Choi conveys the idea that the land is, in fact, another form of body. The Earth, both finite and immense, was once no one's property, but over time, it became the domain of capitalists, and today it is converted into data and owned in new ways.

Through her work, she presents an opportunity for profound reflection on the relationships of land, bodies, and data that are “pushed away and leaking out” from the history of control and ownership—thus creating cracks in the system of power.

In this way, Chan Sook Choi begins with questions about her own identity as a migrant and extends her exploration to those who, like her, have been displaced, the stories left behind, and the land and bodies that make up those narratives. Choi engages with human and non-human beings that cannot be fully bound or represented by fixed grand narratives—those who are pushed away and leaking out—reworking their stories and creating fluid, new terrains.

”The hybrid identity created by migrants shares close associations with the human and non-human worldviews. Migration today carries with it the experience of drifting rootless from place to place, floating in midair, settling and possessing.

This mental and physical displacement, and the land as a base layer for that displacement, needs to be defined in a comprehensive and organic way.” (Chan Sook Choi, artist note, quoted in exhibition catalogue, “Sirene – Goldrausch 2020”)

Chan Sook Choi recived her bachelor’s degree in Visual Communications and Media Art as well as her master’s degree at University der Künste in Berlin, Germany. She has held solo exhibitions at the Humbolt Forum (Berlin, 2017), Art Sonje Center Project Space (Seoul, 2017), and the Taipei Digital Art Center (2010). She has also earned selection to the Seoul Museum of Art’s emerging artist support program (2017) and received the Hyundai Motor Group’s VH Award (2019) and a visual art support prize from Germany’s Stiftung Kunstfond (2021).

Her work, which blends multiple media and genres, has been presented at events including a National Theater of Korea national brand performance in Seoul and the festival Ars Electronica, and in settings such as the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg and the Berlin Chamber of Commerce. In 2021, she received the Korea Artist Prize, awarded by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) and the SBS Culture Foundation.

References

• 최찬숙, 조혜옥 외, 『밀려나고 새어 나오는』, 아트북프레스, 2024
• 올해의 작가상 2021, 최찬숙 (Korea Artist Prize 2021, Chan Sook Choi)
• 성곡미술관, 90억 가지 신의 이름 (Sungkok Art Museum, THE NINE BILLION NAMES OF GOD)
• 박건희문화재단, 최찬숙 – Private Collection (Parkgeonhi Foundation, Chan Sook Choi – Private Collection)
• 대안공간 루프, 최찬숙 개인전: 정신적 이주에 관한 보고서 파트 1, 이동기술 편 (Alternative Space LOOP, Chan Sook Choi Solo Exhibition: THE PROMISED LAND)
• 리얼디엠지프로젝트, [RDP 2016 / Residency] 최찬숙 (REAL DMZ PROJECT, [RDP 2016 / Residency] Chan Sook Choi)
• 더 스트림, Re-move to remove: 최찬숙_ Interview, 2019.05.11